Made a build with an active project with everything up to date and it still mostly works. Just a little crashy, but works! When we have time we'll investigate more.

The situation has changed as has been said in other topics. Anyone can test now in any territory for free at the moment. It is only a requirement to be in a ready territory to sell, and the list of territories is increasing over time.

No it's not. Just people from approved territories can publish, as said in the first post by Mark.

The only thing changed is that everyone can download the SDK and try it - but when it comes to actually publishing the game, just some countries can. Unless you want to make a game just for yourself, or maybe learn it to apply to some job, there is no point to invest time on that :P

(I know because I'm from Brazil, applied and was shut down in the middle of the registration process!)